The Keeper Of The Keys
by Garmonbozia
Summary: There's something left for Mycroft at 221B.  Easy to get to.  More difficult to unlock.   - Oneshot


She leans out the window before she answers the door. Just checking. There's always a chance it'll be one of those journalists back again. And she has a nice full bucket of vegetable peelings for the next journalist who wants to come around. It's not though. It's worse than that, and her only consolation is that it's plain from his face he wants to be there even less than she wants him to be. But it has to happen, she supposes. Might as well do it now as later.

She stops on her way to the door, and takes the upstairs key from the little hook. Before, she only had her own copy hanging there. Now there's one on either side of it, still with their keychains. One hanging a little spanner from a Christmas cracker, and a lucky troll with patchy blue hair. The other hanging a miniature magnifying glass. She just takes down her own, though, and goes to the door.

"Hello, Mycroft."

"Afternoon, Mrs Hudson."

"You'll be here for the computer, then. Must say, I expected you sooner." His lips part, but without the words to fill them. "Oh, he _said_, of course he did."

Last thing he said, actually. On his way out the door. Shouted it back to her the way he sometimes would. Mycroft might call for the laptop. Let him have it.

Then, strangest of all, 'Thank you'.

She hadn't thought anything of it at the time. She has since.

"Well," Mycroft manages eventually, "wouldn't want it falling into the wrong hands, would we?"

"Excuse me, Mr Holmes, but there's been nothing from upstairs falling into any hands, thank you very much."

"Oh, I never meant to imply-"

"And don't think they haven't tried, either. Three nights running I sat up in that flat waiting for them. I still have my Peter's old service revolver. Though perhaps I shouldn't say that to you…"

"I shouldn't think it matters, Mrs Hudson."

He'd had to go back to the old home and sit there himself. Of course, there are people who could do that kind of thing for him, but there was… There was something improper in the idea. He sat himself with the fire lit and a hunting rifle over his knee.

"The believers -" they begin, in the same moment.

"Worse than the journalists," Mrs Hudson picks up.

Mycroft nods, "They all want their piece."

And they had guarded theirs.

The key in the door, and the snap of the tumblers has a solemnity, a decisiveness to it that neither of them questions, and nobody so much as thinks about that extra moment on the landing between the sound and the swinging of the door. Just a moment, no skin off anybody's nose. Just a heartbeat. Just a breath, before they step inside.

"You've kept it very nice, Mrs Hudson," he says, with a polite little bow of the head. She allows herself a second's pride. She's gotten things tidied up a bit, in the time since. Just a bit, mind. Got a bit of dusting done and cleared a few surfaces. Got somebody to come and pick up the head from the fridge, because she wasn't putting up with that. She always intended to do that. That was nothing to do with the boys not being here.

Mycroft falters, though, when he looks towards the windows. She's nailed the sashes down, the nails themselves haphazardly driven home, bent and crooked, but doing the job. The outside ledges glitter with little jewels of broken glass.

He probably should have sent somebody.

It's just a thought. Not quite a pang of conscience, not just yet, no guilt in it, but he probably should have sent somebody to watch this place. Honestly, he'd thought Watson would hang about longer than he did. But then, how could he? They're written all over this place. The facing armchairs. The fireplace, full of sports supplements and financial pages with the rest of the newspaper having been put to better uses. The pinned butterflies on the mantel, next to that ridiculous pawing gold cat. How could he have stayed here?

"I put that computer away for safety," says Mrs Hudson, shaking him out of the thought. "Under the bed. I'll just nip and fetch it."

She's only going to the next room, but he bites down hard on a childish desire to follow her. Don't leave me here alone.

He says nothing, but still finds himself turning in her direction. Wishes he hadn't. The wall over the sofa lives and breathes the face of James Moriarty; the trial coverage still pinned up in fading, yellowing newsprint.

When Mrs Hudson heaves herself up from the floor and returns, she finds him still staring, and understands. She stares herself, sometimes.

"Mycroft, if you don't mind me asking-"

"My best people, Mrs Hudson. Every moment of every day." In place of a thank you, she brings up the laptop and places it in his hands. "You don't mind if I stop to check it, do you?"

"Of course not."

He takes it to the kitchen table, switches it on. There's space for all this. All the apparatus has been moved to the far end. This wasn't her. This was John. After Sherlock had left, and after she had, for the third time, discovered that the head had yet to be removed from the fridge, before John went looking for him, they'd had tea. Both of them quiet and not knowing why, only knowing something was wrong. Looking at the empty space between them as though knowing nobody was coming back to bellow and whine by turns about what had been moved.

"You'll stay for tea, won't you, Mycroft?"

"Thank you, Mrs Hudson but I'm afraid-"  
>A password stops him in his tracks.<p>

A generic password screen, requesting his input next to a picture of his brother _grinning_ out of the screen.

Oh, the _child_.

He sighs, "I'm afraid I'm in rather a hurry. Must get this to the gents in IT." They'd be through this in seconds, of course.

In tentative, cynical desperation, he enters his own password. It's incorrect, but triggers a message where a hint ought to be. 'Oh, go on, Mycroft.'

"And a slice of cake, Mycroft?"

"Well… why not?"

"And you're sure the commonwealth won't collapse without you?"

"I think it can last ten minutes."

She insists on staying upstairs, and goes to fetch up the cake. To keep away the quiet, he stands at the door, feels around for unfamiliar words and calls down, "And how have you been, Mrs Hudson?"

"Oh, no complaints," the voice comes back. "I just keep going, always have done."

"What else is there?"

"My thoughts exactly."

Again, he fumbles with the strangeness of small talk before managing. "And Doctor Watson? Have you heard from him?"

"We stay in touch. He was here for lunch just this weekend gone. Having a bit of trouble with a cat, though, thought I'd give him a day or two."

"A cat, you say?"

"Mmh. Stray. Kept dragging things to his window."

"I'm rather fond of cats," he says. Too softly for her to hear, really, because the moment he opened his mouth he regretted the words. He said it before. Said it once, and forgets even the circumstances, but remembers distinctly his brother turning to his landlady and saying, "It's true, Mrs Hudson. White fluffy ones especially. They sit in his lap when he's expecting Mr Bond."

Not like him to joke. Especially not like him to be funny.

And while she clatters about downstairs with the plates and knife and forks, he goes back to Sherlock's laptop. Leans over the keyboard and tries;

'mrshudson'

And privately, only for himself, smiles.


End file.
